Mistake
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: In which a matchmaking fairy finds an unlikely ally, and Regina finds herself in the habit of making one small boy's wishes come true, until he unknowingly returns the favor. Enchanted Forest, missing year.


**A/N:** based on the Tumblr dialogue prompt, "You lied to me." This...is my real headcanon for the missing year. Y'all know how much I love to write about them during that time, but I think everything I've done up to this point has been rather wistful thinking. We'll see if the show ever tells us one way or the other, but I'm curious to hear your theories at the end :)

* * *

Mistake

* * *

Regina grips her fork so hard it nearly snaps in two. Not this again.

Tinker Bell is whispering something into his ear, and he's whispering something back. And then the fairy is laughing, a sweet delicate sound, like a damn carol of the bells, or one of those precious wind chimes adorning the town hall doorway back in Storybrooke that Mary Margaret had loved and Regina could not stand.

And then Tinker Bell's hand flutters to rest on the thief's arm, and he's chuckling and refilling both their wine goblets.

And Regina can't take it anymore.

Her utensils clatter to an untouched plate as she shoves her throne back from the table, earning looks from either side of her—Snow's concerned, Charming's perplexed. She ignores them both, wordlessly discards her napkin and stalks for the door.

"Oh why don't you get a room, you two," she sneers as she passes, and the thief's lopsided grin instantly drops into a gentle frown, but she doesn't need his pity, or his anything at all, and so it's with square shoulders and a look that drips disdain that she spins and walks away from him.

"Regina, wait," a voice calls after her, but it's not his, and why would it be, Regina thinks peevishly as she strides faster, and the near-silent footsteps that follow suit catch up with her just outside the dining hall.

"You don't know who he is, do you," Tinker Bell says bluntly to her back once the double doors have fallen shut behind them.

Regina stills but does not turn. "Of course I do," she snaps. "I raised a son. I read him his bedtime stories. I know who _Robin Hood _is."

"That's not what I mean," says the fairy determinedly, and Regina throws up a hand, whirls around to level her with an exasperated stare.

"What, exactly, do you mean then?"

Tinker Bell glares right back, arms crossed and looking defiant for no good reason that Regina can bother to think of. "Have you even talked to him?"

"Of course not," Regina says dismissively. "Why should I? Isn't it enough that I've given him and his stupid men a roof over their heads and protection while they sleep?" Not to mention the extra large helping of beef and potato stew she'd caught Little John wolfing down before going back for thirds. "Now we need to be talking buddies, too?"

"Well maybe you ought to give it a try," Tinker Bell argues, and what is her deal? Why is she pushing this? Regina can barely stand the man. Being in the same room with him, let alone exchanging words that meet the bare minimum of civil, already feels like such a chore. And chores are for servants, not queens.

"Who knows," challenges the fairy, earning herself another eye roll, "you might even enjoy his company, once you get to know him."

"Like you have?" Regina snorts delicately, shrugging her disinterest, because it's not like she cares what they even have to talk about anyway. "No, thank you. I don't need a friend. I just need my son."

"Could you at least _try_!" Tinker Bell exclaims, palms out in a plea, and Regina can only think of one other time she's been half this heartfelt, when it came to a certain someone's second chance.

Regina's eyes narrow into suspicious slits. "Why would I do that?"

"Oh, I don't know," says Tinker Bell, sounding like she does, in fact, know quite a lot, all of which she's unwilling to share. "You _were_ looking quite green back there, and I'm the one wearing it."

"I'm not _jealous_," Regina scoffs, mouth dropping indignantly. Then, aghast, "Are you…trying to set me _up_ with him?"

"No," says Tinker Bell, and her _no_ is a little too hasty, a touch too vehement, and entirely too unconvincing as far as Regina is concerned.

"Listen, twinkle toes," she starts in viciously, "you tried your pixie dust on me once, and we all know how well that turned out—" (_I wonder who could be to blame for that_, mutters Tinker Bell, which, true, but currently beside the point) "—and just because I am alone does not mean I'm lonely. I don't need a boyfriend, and I certainly don't need to go on a date with a man who thinks that giving away the things he steals makes him some kind of hero!"

"I apologize, I did not mean to interrupt," comes a low voice from a widening gap in the door to the dining hall that Regina had failed to notice mid-rant. Reasonably caught off guard, she can only manage a blank stare as the thief in question slips through, with a pleasant smile for both of them as he does.

"Your Majesty," Robin says with a bow, then squeezes Tinker Bell's arm in an affectionate manner as he takes his leave for the night.

The fairy looks oddly contrite as Regina's gaze swivels, dumbfounded, between Robin's retreating back and Tinker Bell's offending arm.

"Well all right then," she says tartly, before she pivots on a heel and retreats to her own bedchambers, where she had planned to spend the rest of her evening alone in peace, until these two idiots had effectively and inexplicably ruined it.

.

.

.

Regina feels an overwhelming desire to avoid them both after that, a task made difficult by the simple and unfortunate fact that they're everywhere she is, right around every corner she turns, and just a table or two away at mealtimes. They've somehow even wrangled up an exclusive invitation to attend her weekly witch meetings with the Charmings.

Regina never thought she'd find herself in a position to miss the days when she had Snow White and the prince all to herself; but then, she never thought she'd be sharing her castle with an honorably misguided bunch of smelly, dirty thieves, either.

At least none of them to her knowledge seem to possess a single pair of tights, she thinks with a grateful shudder on one drearily overcast morning. She's picking her way through the fresh wave of fallen apples autumn has just brought to her orchards, but the thought has her pausing, picturing Henry. She wonders what he's doing now, whether his love for that ridiculous movie has been preserved even though his memories of her were not.

The Henry she knows and loves and can't ever forget would have been over the moon to discover who had taken up residence in her castle. Would have been the first to get caught with a head bent in conspiracy over the dinner table, plotting with Tinker Bell how best to lock his mom up with Robin Hood in a broom closet somewhere, or mysteriously separate them from the rest of the group on night patrol in the woods.

Operation Red Fox, is what her son would call it.

Yes, Regina decides with a wistful, defeated sigh, Henry and Tinker Bell would get along very well. Shared interests have a way of bringing people together like that.

Whereas things like cursed fates and happily never afters have a way of keeping certain people apart.

So there will be no Henry to engage in matchmaking schemes with a fairy. No Henry to talk down when he suggests to her (with that overly serious look he gets every time he thinks he's being perfectly subtle about something), "Mom, you look like you could use some fresh air," or "Hey Mom, I think that guy with the cool gold-tipped arrows said he wanted to talk to you about something down by the stables." No Henry to stop from then turning to tell a completely unsuspecting Robin the same about her.

But while there's no Henry, there is Roland, the thief's child, who seems to have taken a liking to Tinker Bell the way all little boys who've yet to grow up seem to do; claps his hands when she flutters her wings, begs loudly and often for the power to fly just like she can (but there's precious little pixie dust to spare for a dream he'll soon outgrow). This perhaps bothers Regina the most, even more than the warm smiles, the friendly touches his father always seems to have for the fairy whenever the Queen is nearby.

It bothers her, trying to figure out how to be a mother without her son, around a boy who's never known his. It bothers her that he gravitates toward the woman who's never even _had_ a son. And it bothers her that she cares.

So, okay, maybe Regina is a little envious, but not for the reasons Tinker Bell thinks.

But such thoughts of the thief and his boy are not welcome in her orchards, so she vows to clear her mind of them then. She presses an apple to the tip of her nose, breathes in the familiar scent (tart and fresh, certainly not _forest_-y enough to remind her of—well, of no one, because she's decided not to think of him any more today), when a rustling sound behind her has her dropping it to her feet with a resounding thunk and a startled gasp.

"Hi!" says Roland when Regina turns.

Well, so much for that.

"Hi," she parrots back unthinkingly, then, sternly, "Roland, does your father know you're here?"

"No," says Roland happily, bouncing up and down in place as though the very thought of pulling one over his dad delights him to no end. But his face takes a turn for the morose, with two dimpled cheeks and a pouty lower lip, as he explains to her, "Papa says not to bother you." He scuffs a guilty toe into the soil.

"Is that right?" Regina asks faintly, locking fingers flat against her belly.

Roland nods his head with comical vigor, then frowns spectacularly and says, "Because he doesn't want you to be sad."

This certainly makes for an interesting wrinkle in this whole matter of the thief and his boy.

"Why would it make me sad?" Regina asks with a lightness that counters the heavy anchor in her heart, a careless flippancy that is lost on the boy whose eyes are blind with innocence and judgment clouded by faith.

"Papa says you have someone too, someone just like me!" exclaims Roland, an exuberant finger prodding himself in the dimpled cheek to demonstrate. "But he's not here right now."

"No," says Regina, "he's not," and the admission has her knees sinking into the soil, her back digging into her tree, one hand grasping, unseeing, for a fallen apple by her side. For something, anything, that feels real enough to remind her of what isn't.

She finds it in an unexpected source, when Roland takes her sudden sitting as an invitation to do the same, excitement spurring him forward, plopping him down onto his bottom two tree roots away. Tiny fingers slip between hers, with the same instinct that always had Henry searching for her hand when he was too young to walk on his own, and then when he was old enough to recognize the times she couldn't either.

"When's he coming back?" queries the boy, with an enthusiasm that gives Regina pause to wonder, just how much he's been told of Henry, and by whom. Where he's learned to look ahead with such hope, when she's haunted by a past that's already sentenced her future to ruin.

"I don't know," Regina answers him, as honestly as she can, because she does, but _never_ is a concept that she simply can't allow to burden his faith or dull his smile. So she tells him again, firmly this time, "I don't know, but I'm sure he'd love to meet you." It seems to satisfy Roland, her empty promise not of _never_, nor _if_, but of _when_, though she knows (and keeps to herself) that even if Henry does remember what he's lost, in the end, and thinks to look for her, there will be nothing left for him to find.

But such things are not what you confess to a child, least of all one who knows nothing of a mother he no longer has. And so when Roland wonders next whether Henry has "special powers" just like her—her pulse skitters a little at that, at the thought of whose words he might have borrowed—Regina welcomes the changing course of conversation, tells him, proudly, how true Henry is, how strong his beliefs, how pure his heart.

"Can he fly?" Roland asks then with childlike intrigue, as though there couldn't be any possible way, if Henry can manage to be all those things, to not be able to scale the skyline as well.

The moment is oddly reminiscent of the time Henry had asked her pointblank just how _real_ Santa Claus actually was, because that wrapping paper looked awfully similar to last year's, and he was pretty sure Santa would've had to go the store for a new kind of giftwrap by then. But Regina had grown up with magic just right down the hall, so it wasn't…unreasonable, and not quite a lie, to assume Santa _could_ be real and to tell Henry so, was it?

"Every boy has his own special gifts," she hedges now without giving an outright _no_, but Roland's face falls anyway, and she finds herself determined to lift it back up again. Finds herself soothing his frown by reviving his dream, because if he really truly wants to fly, then, well, there might be something she could do about that, and—wait, _what _did she just say to him?

"But only if it's all right with your father," Regina adds hastily, unrelenting this time despite the progressively pitiful look of his downturned lip, as it dawns on the boy that such a thing will never come to pass under the conditions she's just given.

"If what is all right with his father?" questions a new voice, warm with amusement and carrying a smile to match as he approaches. He casually plucks a low-hanging fruit from her tree along the way; it soars into the air, over and over, landing easily back into his palm each time.

Honestly, Regina thinks with no shortage of exasperation, what is he—how did he even know where to—is there a single damn place in this castle he _hasn't_ discovered her trying to hide? Though, she supposes begrudgingly, the thief probably can't help that his entire existence seems to have been devised solely for her own personal displeasure. And anyway, he'd obviously come in search of Roland, not her.

Still, his sudden intrusion being no more his fault doesn't make it any less irritating to her. She braces herself for the cautiously cordial look she's surely about to receive, the careful reminder he's about to give Roland not to bother the Queen.

So she isn't at all prepared for it when Robin questions mildly next, "What manner of mischief have you gotten up to this time?", and it takes her a full moment to realize she's not the one he's just addressed.

Roland quakes and cowers, mumbles out a not-so-innocent "Nothing," and Regina welcomes the distraction—returns his bashful smile to sidestep Robin's irascible one, tames his wild curls to remind herself that despite having forfeited the love of her son, she hasn't lost her touch as a mother.

Her efforts seem to have a calming effect on the boy; and when neither she nor, in turn, his father, does much in the way of protesting, Roland leans in to inspect her feather-lined collar, then confidently deposits himself with a plop in her lap. Careful not to disturb the feathers, he wraps his arms koala-like around her neck, with little regard for how evil a queen every one of his bedtime stories have surely made her out to be.

Robin's eyebrow lifts, and Regina thinks perhaps she should apologize to him, for having given his son the impression that she's not as dangerous as such tales say. But still he says nothing, doesn't look even slightly upset, and she finds the tension that's always pulled him toward her and her from him feels almost…relaxed, somehow, now that Roland's here—here, there, then everywhere all at once, as he clambers over her like a bejeweled jungle gym.

"Your son is determined to fly," Regina comments dourly, "after he's finished climbing me like a tree," and when Robin's gaze slides to her next and still his grin remains, she tells herself it's the heat of the sun, finally slipping out of the clouds, that's shot her pulse to the sky.

"Ah," Robin nods with mock solemnity, "yes, he's been very keen to learn how he might come to possess such an ability." He then levels Roland with a stern eye that has the boy knocking elbows with Regina in order to avoid it.

"I'm assuming that's the last thing his father would want for him to do?" she remarks, aiming for dry, but the effect is all but ruined when Roland's anxious wriggling jams a knobby little shoulder into her ribs. Her breath leaves her in an audible whoosh and Robin starts forward, looking mildly alarmed, then hovers uncertainly a few feet away as her gasp turns into something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

"Are you all right?" he asks, the furrow in his brow intensifying, and Roland seems so abashed at what he's done, so concerned by the severe talking-to he knows he's in for later, that Regina does the one thing she can think to do, the one thing that had never failed to bring a smile to her own son's face.

She retaliates, and tickles the living daylights out of him.

Roland lets out a spectacular shriek—a giddy, almost disconcerting sound that pierces the early morning calm, awakening whatever remaining parts of the world had slept through it until now. He practically dissolves into sniggers, squirming delightedly and without any particular conviction to fully slip from her grasp.

It occurs to Regina that she can't remember the last time her face felt on the verge of splitting from a smile, and judging from the somewhat stunned expression on Robin's face, neither can he.

Roland's laughter dwindles to a quiet chortle, and when he hiccups, Regina's hands still.

"Majesty can help, Papa," he says plaintively once he's gathered his breath back from his exuberant mini-workout, the pleading already evident in his tone as he turns striking eyes and deep dimples onto the man he'd inherited them from. "She can help me _fly_!"

Regina grimaces, wonders how something spoken so innocently can sound so…well…incriminating. She'd been thinking more along the lines of a simple levitation spell, not some witch on a broomstick pitching his son to his doom, as Robin has likely concluded by now—

But he only looks thoughtful as he regards the two of them, like a pair of mischief-makers he hadn't given their proper due until it wasn't worth the trouble to keep them apart.

"No harm in making a boy's dream come true," Robin concedes at last, "no matter how small the dream, or—" and he looks pointedly at Roland as he continues, "—how rare of an occurrence such wish-granting shall be."

The boy is nodding, quite agitatedly, as though he's just been offered an ice cream that's already started to melt before it's even handed to him.

Without another moment to lose, he springs to his small booted feet, crying out, "Thank you, Papa!" before turning to embrace Regina at the knees as she rises to stand beside him.

"It's just a levitation spell," she reassures, the words meant for Robin though her eyes never stray from his son's.

"Like the spell you used to raise the rock guarding your crypt," he supplies, and she recalls how she'd revealed more to him than just blood magic and bottled potions, that night he wouldn't let her break into her castle alone. When she nods, he carries on, "Though I imagine this one here won't entail quite as much heavy-lifting."

"Not as heavy, no," she agrees, "but much more valuable," and she really needs him to stop smiling at her like that, so her tone returns to business-like. "He won't be more than a few feet—" and when she sees Robin make an uncomprehending face, she quickly revises, "not even half a meter," to which he _ah_s his understanding, "above the ground at all times. And I'll fly him directly into your arms. He'll be completely safe." A pause, then a promise: "You can trust me, Robin."

The ocean in his eyes glows brighter than the sun in hers, and she hates herself for wondering if that's just how they are (bold, brilliant, blue), and if they happen to look at all women this way, whether she be maid or fairy or evil queen—or if the warmth she sees in them is only a tenth of what Tinker Bell does.

"Regina," and he pairs her name with a low chuckle, jolting the darkness from her thoughts, "I can assure you that if I _didn__'__t _trust you, then we would be having a very different conversation right now."

Thrown, she bends and busies herself with straightening out Roland's cape, ensuring that not a curl on his head has fallen out of place, determined to return him to his father's arms in just as impeccable condition as when he leaves hers.

"Are you ready?" she asks, needlessly, because the eagerness is radiating off of Roland in waves now, giving his heels an extra bounce, stretching his smile to near-hysterical proportions. He hums his excitement, claps his anticipation as Regina takes a small step back, then raises her hands upward, palms to the sky. Roland's feet ascend with them.

He wiggles one experimentally; she pauses him a few inches from the tallest tips of the grass, allows him time to adjust to this newfound feeling of looking down and touching air. He lifts an ankle to examine whatever's beneath it, then, hardly believing his good luck, gives a delighted squeal, legs kicking out to encounter nothing but the wind, no resistance, no fear of falling back to the ground.

Regina's hands hover around him, like clutching a bubble that floats him toward his papa—who, when she tears her gaze away from Roland long enough to take note of his reaction, looks as though he could be flying himself, for the awestruck quality in his parted mouth and slackened jaw.

"Watch, Papa!" Roland crows gleefully, even though his father clearly has eyes for nothing else at the moment, even though he's but a yard away from him now, and inching closer to his open arms with every passing second. "I'm _flying_!"

"You most certainly are, my boy!" exclaims Robin, grin widening along with his embrace as Roland draws near, ready to catch him right out of the air. Regina's eyes flit over his face, skirting over his eyes out of some inexplicable fear of what she'll find there, until they land on his lips, and he mouths to her the words, _Thank you_.

Her brain short-circuits and breaks the spell just in time, as Robin's hands reach out to grasp Roland beneath the arms, then lift him higher still, tossing him toward the clouds, filling the sky with the sounds of his ecstatic laughter.

"How was it," asks Robin, "fun, yeah?" and he holds firmly on, adjusting one arm over Roland's legs and the other to brace his back and belly, before turning him swiftly sideways, eliciting another pitch of giggles as the boy twists to avoid getting tickled.

Robin is chuckling as he rights him back up, sets him feet-first back on the ground. "What would you like to say to Queen Regina?" he prompts him playfully then, and Roland beams instantly, favoring her with a dimpled grin.

"Thank you, Majesty," he says, suddenly shy and reaching automatically for Robin's hand.

"You're welcome, Roland," and she smiles when the sound of her saying his name has him hiding a bashful face behind his father's knee, muffling his response.

"Use your words," Robin reminds kindly, persuading Roland to lean back and look up.

"It's your turn now," Roland tells him, in what he likely thinks to be a whisper, though Regina can hear him clear as day, as his papa returns his statement with a frown.

"My turn?" echoes Robin. "My turn to what, my boy?"

"To ask her!" Roland fairly demands, tugging on his britches with equal insistence.

"Hmmmm?" Robin absentmindedly straightens out his pant legs, and Regina can't decide if he's legitimately mystified or just playing dumb, until his rascally smile tells her the latter.

"So…?" says Roland pointedly.

"Well," Robin replies, "I do believe that's been enough flying for one day. Besides, I'm likely too heavy for the queen to carry, even with magic." He winks at her when she snorts a little more audibly than she'd intended.

Roland regards his father like he's being unnaturally difficult. "Not _that_," he protests in a hushed voice, "ask her…you know."

"Ask me?" interjects Regina, and Robin's gaze on her goes searching, but searching for what, she doesn't have the faintest clue.

"Pleeeeease?" wheedles Roland. "You said you would."

It's Regina's turn to look bemused. Said he would ask her _what_, exactly?

Robin heaves a reluctant sigh, then begins formally, "Roland wishes to know," and because he's busy looking Regina in the eye, he misses the reproachful look his son gives him for his not-so-subtle misdirection, "if you would like to join us for supper sometime—" but Roland _ahem_s loudly at that, and so Robin amends, "—tonight, rather."

There is a pause as his proposition sinks in. She thinks she knows what words he's just said, but they make no sense in the order that he said them. Dinner? As in, eating it together? At the same time, across the same table? On purpose?

"Did the fairy put you up to this?" Regina asks, sounding just shy of scathing, as she tries to tone down the brusqueness she typically reserves for Robin, for Roland's sake.

She's going to kill Tinker Bell.

But no, "It was Papa's idea," Roland tells her in earnest, and she'd be loath to think him capable of telling lies. "He kept—" but Robin is the one clearing his throat this time, which has the boy glaring up at him, saying accusingly, "You promised _both_ of us—"

Robin shushes him hastily with a laugh and an embarrassed shake of his head, reaching up to scratch it self-consciously.

"Did he?" Regina wonders, more to herself than anyone else, but Roland responds with a fervent nod.

"For _weeks_," he divulges, and Robin is beginning to look somewhat chagrined, maybe the tiniest bit regretful at having entrusted such a secret with a five-year-old boy.

"Now, Roland," he reprimands gently, hand dropping back to his side, "Queen Regina hasn't even given us her answer yet, whether she'll be joining us for—"

"Not us," says Roland, and Regina imagines she looks just as shocked as Robin does when their gazes catch and then splinter off in a hurry.

"...I see," responds Robin after a beat, sounding deeply amused despite himself. "And where do you plan to be in the meantime?"

"With Tink," explains Roland, then, just to emphasize again, in case his papa needs any further clarification, "Not you."

Regina watches the banter between father and son, utterly bewildered. What is happening? It strikes her as highly unlikely that Roland would have dreamed up such an elaborate set of circumstances for the sake of a simple dinner invitation, and yet it seems equally improbable that it had been Robin's idea. He's never made any indication of actively desiring her company—and she's made it perfectly clear, on more than one occasion, that she actually finds his particularly distasteful. Which could perhaps explain why he's never sought hers out in the past, if she's forced to be honest about it, but she'd also been quick to assume it was an entirely mutual thing, that they can't stand one another.

Can't they?

A flare of annoyance flashes through her, coloring her vision in red. This is the last thing she needs right now, to deal with a thief who has _feelings_, who's apparently been biding his time before letting them show. It was mortifying enough, to have a fairy proclaim herself champion of a cause forever lost—of a second chance they both know Regina's already blown, a nameless man's life she's already ruined with her cowardice and caving in to her anger. Now she needs to add yet another name to the list of those she's disappointed?

Make that two, she thinks grouchily when Roland re-trains hopeful eyes on her, and how she can possibly let him down, too? It's easy enough to shrug aside Tinker Bell's endless nagging, but saying no to those eyes, and that expectant smile, is exceptionally harder than stalking away from a fairy she'd once stabbed in the back.

Her gaze falls back on Robin, his expression now bland but carefully so, she imagines, as he smooths out his son's curls and plucks invisible lint from his hood; his actions mirror her own from earlier, when his declaration of trust had startled and disoriented and flipped some switch in her world, turning it from dark to blue (so, so blue). She wonders if this trust isn't a two-way road, if _no_ is the only answer she has to give them after all.

When Regina says at last, "I suppose that would be fine," it's a toss up which reaction satisfies her more—the eye-crinkling smile Robin gives her, or the look Roland then bestows on his father, one that states clearly and triumphantly, _I told you so, didn't I?_

"Happy now?" Robin asks him, teasingly gruff, and his boy answers with a beam to rival the sun's. "The Queen shall dine with a thief tonight," he announces with a heaving sigh, "just as you'd wished," and he bends to gather Roland up, straightens to hoist him around one hip.

Roland looks immensely pleased with himself, smiling and pitter-pattering his palms on Robin's back in an almost indulgent manner, as though they both know which of the two had truly been the one to wish it. Robin is chuckling as he readjusts his grip, holding his son tighter, palming away a smattering of curls to make room for a kiss on his forehead. Something tightens at Regina's throat—something tender, and hard, and unforgiving—and then smothers her further when Robin moves his arm from cradling Roland's head to wrapping around his middle. His tunic sleeve drags over green wool as he does, revealing a generous expanse of sinewy muscle, of gently tanned skin.

Regina's heart gives a tremendous stutter.

She realizes then what a terrible mistake she's made.

And she knows exactly who to blame for it.

.

.

.

"You lied to me!"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," replies the fairy, calmly refusing to lift her gaze from the book in her hands and meet Regina's outraged glare.

Like hell she doesn't.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Regina charges on, determined to spread her ire, share her wrath.

A delicate hand pauses mid-page turn. "Tell you what?" asks Tinker Bell, sounding suddenly curious, looking much more invested in the conversation than seconds earlier had seemed to indicate.

Regina feels something start to boil inside of her. "That he was the one who—that Robin—"

Her interest in the fictional account of Dorothy's travels through Oz entirely abandoned to the real-time drama unraveling before her now at the mention of the thief's name, Tinker Bell sets her book aside, turns full and attentive eyes on Regina.

"That Robin…?" she prods.

That he—well, he—God, why is her brain making such an incoherent mess of things now, Regina thinks furiously, feeling her cheeks begin to flush and her palms break into a sweat as she wrings them together. That Robin—that despite everything that should've discouraged him, every haughty stare-down, every caustic word, the man has against all odds found it somewhere in his large and stupidly honorable heart to...what? _Dine_ with her? Enjoy the company of her disparaging comments and menacing glares, over wine and candlelight instead of the many tables that usually sit between them?

Absurd is the only word to describe it.

Even now, Regina can hardly believe the soft glances and the bright eyes underneath her apple tree had been meant for her, though she'd seen it happen, had been objectively aware of no one else for a mile at least he could've been smiling at instead. He had this way of making her feel like no one else existed, when he'd looked at her the way he did. Had made her long, for a moment, for something other than what she'd lost; had made her forget.

But we can't have that, now, can we?

"What did you see?" Tinker Bell all but demands, literally on the edge of her seat now.

Regina glowers prettily. "I saw Robin. Holding his son."

"Okay?" prompts Tinker Bell, with a detectable undercurrent of frustration in her tone. "And?"

Well, what the hell else does she want her to say? "He was holding his _son_," Regina repeats, and she knows it's unfair, to hold something like that against him, but she hadn't risen to rule by being fair, hadn't then ruined it all by failing to be good. She'd _been_ good. She'd tried, for a time, for Henry. But it all came down to the same thing, in the end. No amount of good _or_ evil would bring him back to her, no true love's kiss could break the spell or bridge the magical worlds between them.

Tinker Bell simply blinks at her for a moment, confused stare meeting confrontational one. "Oh," she says then, with a dawning comprehension that Regina does not share, and she can't fathom why, but the fairy's disappointment is a palpable thing, how it slumps her shoulders and turns her lips down toward the ground. "Is that all?"

Isn't that enough? "What else matters?" Regina grouses, feeling more and more at a loss with every unexpected turn this conversation is taking. Why is she even bothering, wanting her to understand? How _can _she, how can anyone, when they haven't lost what she has? "Robin has his son. I have nothing."

"But you could have Robin," Tinker Bell argues stubbornly, and ah yes, this sounds familiar, now they're back on track, aren't they?

Regina leans in close, spitting out fire before her insides burn. "You don't get it, do you?" she hisses. "What good does that do me, _having _someone if that someone is not my son? Without Henry, I don't just have nothing; I _am_ nothing. I'm not a mother. All I am is the Evil Queen."

"I think I speak on behalf of most people when I say you're not a villain anymore, Regina."

"I'm no hero either," she bluntly reminds her, and when Tinker Bell looks on the verge of arguing some more, Regina shuts her up with one simple truth: "Only Henry ever saw me that way."

A long silence draws itself out between them, Regina infusing it with every ounce of hostility she can muster, Tinker Bell with her peculiar frown and pensive gaze, searching her now just as Robin's had earlier; but whatever it is they're looking for, Regina's not sure she has it in her to give them. Sorrow has her spent, and pain is all that's left of her that she can afford to feel.

"He really does want to know you, Regina," the fairy says at last, one final endeavor to shine her light where a heart's been darkened, but she sounds resigned. Defeated. Like she knows certain fights are never meant to be won, some causes lost and never meant to be found.

And she's not wrong about that.

"Why?" Regina's shrug is careless, her words hollow. "There's nothing to know. Whatever he wants from me, I have nothing to give right now."

"Maybe not now," Tinker Bell agrees, "but I promise you, you won't feel this way forever." Someone's been spending far too much time with Snow, Regina realizes, and the thought should upset her, infuriate her, even, but all she feels now is numb, because she gives far too much away when she lets herself care. "I think you'll find that Robin's a very selfless man. And a patient one, too."

"Well, it's his time to waste," mutters Regina. And his time is not her problem. "He's just some thief with a crush. He'll get over it."

"I think he'd rather wait for you," Tinker Bell states, and Regina knows, somehow, she isn't just referring to the dinner to be laid out two hours from now—when Robin will sit with folded hands on the table and trusting eyes on the door, every time it opens and she's not the one to walk through.

Still, "You can't possibly know that."

Tinker Bell's face twists into something indecipherable now. "You're right, maybe I don't," she allows. "Though I tend to not be wrong about this sort of thing." No; she really isn't, is she? But she does tend to place her faith in undeserving hands, and perhaps that is just as bad, a mistake she should know better now than to make again. "So what are you going to do about it, Regina?"

But it's an empty question with no answer to fill it, because they both know she isn't ready. Not for this. Not for him.

Well.

Not yet, anyway.


End file.
